HOUSTON, TX (Covering Katy News)— A judge has ordered a new election due to illegal votes in a judicial race in which Republican candidate Tami Pierce lost by just 449 votes to Democratic Judge DaSean Jones.
"The court has found that 1,430 illegal votes were cast in the race for the 180th District Court and that it is not realistic or feasible to determine which candidate received those votes," Judge David Peeples wrote.
Peeples said many of the votes cast in the 2022 race were invalid because the people who cast them did not live in Harris County, did not show identification or had other residency-related issues.
- The Houston Chronicle was first to report the story HERE.
Houston Public Media is also reporting that "Peeples found that a net margin of 321 votes were cast for Jones in the extended hour of voting at the end of Election Day. The court held that extension "resulted from an official mistake by the Harris County Elections Administration Office."
- Read the Houston Public media report HERE.
The judge’s order also says Pierce can recover $65,265 for attorney’s fees and $752 from Jones for costs which the court finds are reasonable and necessary for defending the motion to dismiss the case filed by Jones in January 2023 and heard by the court in February. The court found that Jones motion to dismiss was without merit and frivolous, and those running’s were affirmed by the First Court of Appeals of Texas.
- Read the Judges Court Order HERE.
"Judge Peeples's decision to order a new election confirms what the Harris County GOP has been saying since 2022: The previous election administrations' handling of our elections was beyond negligent, resulting in voters' confidence in our elections being damaged," Siegel said.
But Mike Doyle, the Harris County Democratic Party chair, defended the results.
"There's no justification for redos and redos just because election deniers aren't happy with the results of Harris County," Doyle said.
Jones will remain on the bench pending the outcome of the new election. While Judge David Peeples ordered a new election, his ruling didn't undo any of Jones's decisions since he took office in January 2023. However, attorneys could challenge his ruling, especially if Jones loses a new election.
"Nobody seems to know what exactly would happen to those cases," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told the Texas Tribune. "This is not a test that has legitimate grounds for an appeal. I think we don't know what precisely this would look like."
For Jones, there is another potential problem: it is a rule that limits judges from running for two seats simultaneously, Rottinghaus said. In November, Jones is running for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court. It is unclear if an exception will be made and Jones will be allowed to run for both seats.
"A date for the new election was not immediately set as Peeples wrote that he first needed to discuss this with attorneys in the case," the Associated Press reported.
- The Associated Press reported on the story HERE.